Greater Love
by Lily Zen
Summary: A short series of ficlets wherein Chuck Bass looks back on his life, and his great loves. AU. Future-fic.
1. Icarus Heart

Icarus Heart:

Greater Love #1

Fandom: Gossip Girl

Pairing: Chuck/Blair

Rating: T

Warnings: not an HEA, a little on the dark and morbid side

Archive: Ask

Author: Lily Zen

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><p>Notes: Part of a series I'm working on. Though this alludes to past events in the show, this is a future-fic based on how I think ChuckBlair would turn out about a decade later.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gossip Girl. I also do not own the poem. It is "III" by Pablo Neruda, found in the collection of poetry _100 Love Sonnets_. For the purpose of this story, I've broken up some of the stanzas, so this is not the typical format of the poem.

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><p><em>Bitter love, a violet with its crown<em>

_of thorns in a thicket of spiky passions, _

_spear of sorrow, corolla of rage: how did you come_

_to conquer my soul? What _via dolorosa_ brought you?_

Blair. Blair… _Blair_.

It consumed him, the wild need that just the utterance of a name could invoke. She was the first _real _love he'd allowed himself to have, the first to reach beyond the arrogance, beyond the façade—"I'm _Chuck Bass_,"—to the boy within. Blair touched the lonely child in the darkest, coldest crevice of his soul, and warmed him up, chased the frostbite from his bones; brought him to her breast and just _loved him_.

He was the most resistant patient, but eventually her patience outlasted even his reluctance (his fear).

_Why did you pour your tender fire_

_so quickly, over my life's cool leaves?_

_Who pointed the way to you? _

A night that should have been haze by now stood out in the cruelest vividness. Just a night, a club, a heartbreak, a dance…and his own heart was lost, captured in her tiny hands, and the trust in her eyes when she pulled him close, the sigh of her silk slip on the leather upholstery so loud in his ears as his veins pulsed with adrenaline and dopamine, and whispered against the curve of his ear, "It's alright. I want this too."

Her sweet and earnest declaration drove him higher, more wood for the fire, for the pyre that he was slowly building in his soul to set flame to the ice cold corpse of his former self.

_What flower,_

_what rock, what smoke showed you where I live?_

He was so gentle with her, gentler than he could ever remember being with anyone, and each of her ecstatic, lust-laden sighs and mewls was taken, stored away, and committed to excruciatingly detailed memory, each one a little piece of redemption, of hope.

_Because the earth shook—it did—that awful night;_

_then dawn filled all the goblets with its wine;_

_the heavenly sun declared itself;_

_while inside, a ferocious love wound around_

_and around me—_

Great love. Impossible love. The kind of love that songs were written about, that people gave their lives, their souls, their dignities for.

That was _ChuckandBlair, BlairandChuck._

Burning too hot to last, out of control; wildfire that decimated the countryside, making room for new growth.

Their love was the first, and because it was the first, it would always be the best, the brightest, the purest…until it wasn't anymore. Until it became dark and twisted, like Othello and Desdemona, so sweet it soured, too good to stay good so it must become bad.

_till it pierced me with its thorns, its sword, _

_slashing a seared road through my heart._

Then it was decay, dead flowers in the garbage, the petals retaining a kind of beauty even then as they darkened and withered, and fell away to expose the raw inner workings.

He would always have the memory. It would linger like a dried bud, like a wound long scarred over. Beautiful, eternal, perfectly imperfect.

-FIN-


	2. Sanctified Purified

Sanctified, Purified:

Greater Love #2

Fandom: Gossip Girl

Pairing: Chuck/Eva

Rating: T

Warnings: some heavy religious/spiritual thoughts, some stuff people might consider blasphemous depending on how devout you are

Archive: Ask

Author: Lily Zen

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><p>Notes: The second (though I wrote this third) installment in the Greater Love series. I love Chuck. Why do I love Chuck so much? Btw, there's some religiousspiritual wonderings going on in this fic, sort of playing off the fact that multiple times in the show Eva is referred to as an angel. None of it is intended to offend anyone. Chuck's just a man in love, and they do, say, and think some silly things sometimes.

Disclaimer: Gossip Girl isn't mine. Neither is the poem, which is "XXV" by Pablo Neruda in _100 Love Sonnets. _As with the other poems, some of the stanzas have been broken up to flow better with the fic.

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><p><em>Before I loved you, Love, nothing was my own:<em>

_I wavered through the streets, among objects:_

_nothing mattered or had a name:_

_the world was made of air, which waited._

Why did people look to the sky when they thought about Heaven? Chuck had never understood.

Then he was saved by an angel, her rough hands that had known unceasing labors of miraculous love bringing him back from Charon's ghastly ministrations, and he knew why people looked up; he was looking up into her eyes, and he saw Heaven.

It wasn't ethereal, but it was. He had no words, no thoughts but for 'I have found salvation.'

He was converted to the Church of Eva.

_I knew rooms full of ashes, _

_tunnels where the moon lived,_

_rough warehouses that growled _Get lost_,_

_questions that insisted in the sand._

Eva was water in the desert, an island when he needed sanctuary; she was whatever other clichéd phrases people used when they'd loved and lost, but still cherished the memory of their time was that person. Eva was perfection. The whore with the heart of gold.

_Everything was empty, dead, mute, _

_fallen, abandoned, and decayed:_

She helped him to see that there was something besides horror and disease living inside of him, that he could be good if he wanted to be, that he could love without the cover of darkness to protect his weakened heart…and that every time he did that trembling organ became stronger, more able.

Eva set him free.

He was trapped in a cage of his own making, and with one touch of her healing hands, he began to shed the chains of self-hate that had held him since birth.

She was an angel, a gift.

_Inconceivably alien, it all_

_belonged to someone else—to no one:_

He'd never believed in god. His father had raised him to worship at the altar of all things earthly. Greed and Gluttony were their deities; Lust a lesser, but still necessary part of the triumvirate.

But he woke, and he knew in that instant that there was a god. Its name wasn't any overused paradigm of sin. There was a god, and it was looking down at him, smiling through the eyes of a poor French girl.

_till your beauty and your poverty_

_filled the autumn plentiful with gifts._

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><p>-FIN-<p> 


	3. Strangest Need

Strangest Need:

Greater Love #3

Fandom: Gossip Girl

Pairing: Chuck/Jenny

Rating: T

Warnings: some adult concepts and themes

Archive: Ask

Author: Lily Zen

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><p>Notes: My new guilty pleasure is ChuckJenny. I love the idea of them, how Chuck is drawn to her at the beginning of the series, and then eventually how he is the one she loses her virginity to (although not under the most ideal of conditions), and how complicated they both are. This fic deals a little bit with that past, but it is also a future-fic wherein the two of them, much later down the road, reunite.

Disclaimer: Gossip Girl doesn't belong to me. Neither does the poem. It's "XI" by Pablo Neruda, from _100 Love Sonnets_. As in the first story, I've broken up some of the stanzas to better flow with my story.

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><p><em>I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.<em>

_Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets._

He was always drawn to her, even when he wasn't.

The memory of her, golden and sweet, hovering anxiously on the edges of a party haunted him, stalked the edges of his subconscious mind. She was fresh, clean; everything he was not. He wanted to touch her, to crawl inside of her brilliance and sleep, basking in her sunshine.

Then he felt sick as he tried not to remember what came next, how his need twisted with the poisons running through him, and became dark, angry. He was leaning over the point of no return.

Now, he says thanks every day that someone was there to pull him back.

She trembled, eyed him fearfully, and for the first time in his corrupt, wastrel existence, felt like a monster.

He was a monster.

All he wanted to do was hold her sunshine in his hands.

_Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day_

_I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps. _

Years later the 'what ifs' of that night still plagued him.

Sunshine dimmed, though not because of him (please god, if you're there, if you're listening, not because of him).

Sorrow.

He was broken, she was dying; they clung to each other, lost at sea, grasping a life raft that was slowly deflating, all of the air seeping out in an endless _hisssssssssssssssss_.

She hissed when he broke her open, nudged his way in, and her nails scored his back in retaliation.

"You can stay..."

_I hunger for your sleek laugh,_

_your hands the color of a savage harvest,_

_hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, _

How he wished it had been different, that he had given to her what she deserved, but he was _Chuck Bass without Blair, _and without Blair he wasn't whole, wasn't human. At least that was what he'd told himself.

Time brought clarity; time brought life; time brought Jenny home, and she wasn't the same bitter, broken girl who'd left it. He wasn't the same drowning man who'd cradled her hips and tried to float.

She was Sunshine, and he was soaking it up, content to lay and doze underneath her, next to her in the park.

_I want to eat your skin like a whole almond._

_I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body, _

_the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,_

_I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,_

Some days were hot, some days were cooler, but there was always sunshine even on the darkest nights.

_and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, _

_hunting for you, for your hot heart,_

_like a puma in the barrens of Quitrat__ú__e. _

His fingers flexed, parting the pima, seeking heat, warmth, _Sunshine_.

Her skin was softer than anything. The sheets could have been a thousand thread count, and they would still have felt like sandpaper compared to the satin of the thin membrane that had somehow managed to contain his whole world.

She sighed and shifted a little, beginning to wake up though the sky, the room, the night remained as it was: dark, quiet, intimate. Their children slept on, their high, delighted voices—"Daddy! Mommy! Good morning! Are you up now? Are you up? Can we have waffles? We want waffles for breakfast."—dimmed for now, until the earth finished its rotation and the day began again. Her fingers slid over his forearm, his hand, until they tangled, merged.

Some said he was darkness.

If he was darkness, she was light, would always be light even when she snapped and burned with fury.

But when they merged, she swallowed his darkness, took it into herself, and somehow gave it back pure and clean, through her touch and her words and the glances they exchanged.

Some nights she needed his darkness, and the escape; freedom from being so damn good all the time.

Whatever she needed, he would gladly provide. Yin to yang; right to wrong; light to night; earth and sky.

"Jen," he whispered, his voice low, pulsing, _purring_, "I need you."

Stirring a little more, his wife—his _wife_, _his_ wife, his wife!—murmured back, "You always need me." So matter-of-fact, so apt with that edge of humor that cut just as sharp as his own.

"Yes," he agreed with a sibilant hiss, as her slender leg looped over his, as she settled above him, naked and lovely, her golden hair strung with soft moonlight, her body sleek and magnificent. (Perhaps she was the puma now.) "I've always needed you."

Then there was heat, and need; devouring, consuming, feasting until they could handle no more, until they curled up side by side, contented, warmed.

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><p>-FIN-<p> 


End file.
